This Week's NPR Weekend Edition Sunday Puzzle

In fact the problem is poorly formulated. The lockbox is
clearly the answer if they don't mind writing their weight
down. Or Big John's solution is quite neat. Or you could
have each passenger divide their weight into n unequal
parts and write each part down separately, giving you
3n pieces of paper which you then sum. No doubt you
could figure out how to use the Chinese Remainder Theorem
if you wanted to...

Or you could fly a 182 with half tanks - if they'll fit in
the plane, you'll be OK.

John

"John Theune" wrote in message
1...
john smith wrote in news:vsw_b.21$OE4.9
@fe1.columbus.rr.com:

The Current Challenge (given February 22, 2004):

A private pilot has a four-seat plane, and he's offered to take three
friends up for a flight. To do his load and fuel calculations the pilot
needs to know the combined weight of his three passengers. Now, the
three passengers are sensitive about their weight, and none of them
will
let anyone else know how much he weighs. And no scale at the flying
club
is big enough to weigh more than one person at a time. How does the
pilot quickly get the accurate combined weight of the three passengers?

E-mail your answer to , or send a post card to:

PUZZLE
Weekend Edition Sunday
National Public Radio
635 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20001


He simply cancels the flight because his aircraft cannot take all 4 up at
once. The odds of 3 people being asked to go up in a plane together when
all of them are concerned about being underweight are vanishingly small.
Barring that they could go in to the room one at a time and weight then
selves and write down the weight on a piece of paper and insert it into a
slot in a lock box so no one could see the results until all 3 papers are
in the box. The pilot adds up the numbers and has his total weight and
no one know which wieght goes to which person.